Here are a few thoughtful words right out of the mouth of Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, a man who doesn't have many of them: "The goal is simple — render the (chemical weapons) stockpile safe so that the surrounding community can live without fear."Thank you Sen. McConnell, now please sit down and be quiet before you predictably say something foolish. But it's too late, there goes Sen. McConnell taking off like an unguided missile, wrecking havoc with all sorts of half-baked ideas about how to achieve just that.
Seems as though he's drafted a measure to tack onto the defense appropriations bill that will require the Army to assess the shortcomings of the current plan to destroy the weapons stockpile here and in five other locations around the nation. It will also require the Army to assess the risk of storing the weapons in light of the terrorist attacks (so far so good). Then he urges the Army to consider the disassembly and neutralization of the weapons.
The good senator heaped the amendment onto the appropriations bill after having a talk with some people around Blue Grass Army Depot in Richmond, Ky., the site of a weapons stockpile. These people are about to come unhinged because Army officials have admitted they will probably miss a 2007 deadline for destruction of the weapons.
Well, we are about to come unhinged because this errant move will stall the beginning of the destruction of the weapons. So to try to hurry things up, the senator wants to slow them down.
But that's par for the course for Shotgun Mitch McConnell on this issue. The people of Richmond and Calhoun County and the other sites ought to be angry, but we should all be directing that anger toward the senator. Here's a guy who has done just about everything he can to drag this issue out and that was before Sept. 11. Incredibly, he is still doing it.
This new method of neutralization — championed by the Kentucky-based Chemical Weapons Working Group and its director Craig Williams — might be OK for Richmond but it isn't OK for Calhoun County.
It is, in essence, a method that is untried. Yes, experiments have taken place and some of them have been successful, but no large-scale operations involving the kind of neutralization technique the senator is pushing have been performed on the types of weapons we have.
Sen. McConnell's partner and equally confused colleague in the Senate, Richard Shelby once said he didn't want the people of Calhoun County to be guinea pigs. Well senators, this is exactly what we'll be getting if we are handed this method.
Incineration has been successfully tried and tried on the types of weapons we have here. This new technique would call for a total overhaul of the present facility if not the construction of a new one and any number of permits that would have to be approved. It is simply hard to imagine being ready and approved to try this new method even if it had been successfully attempted elsewhere within a few years.
Sen. McConnell, in short, is increasing the duration of the danger in our community by dogging the Army to take up this alternative technology.
This might be the thing for Richmond, a place with a far smaller stockpile. But it isn't right for Calhoun County.
The way to make this part of Alabama safe from the dangers of the stockpile is to incinerate it as safely and as quickly as possible.
